In a month’s time you are going to be the company’s go-to person for……

A)     Cups of tea / photocopying requests

B)      Advice on the best sushi restaurants in the Wall Street area

C)      Intelligence on the financial asset class I have been assigned to researching

Many of the world’s interns would have chosen A or B from the options above. Thankfully I’m not one of them. My latest project at Lab49 Tower will see me make the transition from a semi knowledgeable aviation buff to a financial guru of greatness. That’s the plan anyway, if it fails then I can always try my hand at being an earl grey expert or a paragon (another great word) of photocopying. The tasks we are being given in The Lab are far from menial. Each piece of work has a purpose, other than to keep interns busy and it feels good to be able to contribute something which will be useful one day.

Something which would have been useful to me on Saturday was knowledge of the NYC fire hydrant tax. We had planned a weekend trip to Boston via discounted rental car but just as we were about to set off, this stealthy tax was revealed to us, adding a fair few dollars onto our bill for the weekend. Oh well at least we can sleep safe in the knowledge that our local fire hydrants are well looked after.

Driving in Manhattan was something I was keen to experience before I came here and although I didn’t get to spend any time behind the wheel for insurance purposes, I think 8 hours in the passenger seat gave me quite a good taste of what it is like. If there is anyone out there who is able to negotiate their way through the concrete jungle where the lights that inspire you never sleep (or something like that) without getting a beep of the horn and a mouthful of abuse from a taxi driver then, in the words of my favourite whistle-stop-tourer, ‘You’re a better man than I am.’ With that in mind, congratulations are in order to Mr. Matthew Smith, aka my depute king, for getting us to Boston in back not only in once piece, but in a very smooth manner indeed. Shame you had to take your Burger King crown off, leaving me as the last crown-wearer standing and allowing me to claim the title of King. What was more of a shame was the music selection in the car on the way home. Matt and Claire thought it would be a great idea to buy some CDs of classic American music to keep us entertained as we cruised down the freeway. Unfortunately at least 75% of these songs contained far too many of the following lyrics with each song accompanied by very similar banjo riffs:

“I plough the fields by day”

“I drink beer at night”

 “My daddy ploughs the fields by day”

“My daddy drinks beer at night”

“Land of the free/brave/virtuous/wonderful/rising sun/300 (this is starting to sound like the tagline for an epic movie)

“I’ve got a feeling that tonight’s gonna be a good night and I’m gonna meet Lady GaGa and go to see Twilight and Inception.”

Ok, the last one wasn’t nearly as common as some of the other lyrics I quoted, only appearing in around 50% of songs.

The more I think of it, the more I am convinced that the guy standing next to the CD counter wearing a NASCAR hat was the guy singing most of the songs.

Once one gets out of the big city and onto the open road however, things get a little bit more relaxed. The drive from NY to Boston was a pleasure and yielded many interesting sights and funny place names on signs. Upon arrival in B-Town we set about exploring the Harvard University campus. I seem to enjoy allowing my camera’s battery to reach a very low level before taking it anywhere so my photography potential was a bit limited but any photos I did get will surely be stunning, assuming my thumb wasn’t obscuring the lens/causing the flash to do strange things as it so often does in photos. At night, we met up with our hosts for the weekend, the Boston interns, who are an excellent and admirable group of human beings and headed to some kind of all you can eat restaurant where you select the raw materials for your meal and take them to your food preparation consultant and present him with a list of deliverables. The deliverables are then cooked on a big frying pan/disc looking thing and before you can say ‘No sushi please’ you’ve got a hot meal, ready to be consumed. Boom.

 Some more Bostonian sightseeing followed on Sunday including a visit to what I can only describe as the United Nations of food, in fact I’m pretty sure they had stuff there from places who aren’t even in the United Nations. Like Starbucks. We were also treated to some street entertainment, courtesy of a kilted, bagpiping American who called himself Colin. To say I was instantly skeptical of this guy is right next to saying I quite like the occasional Devil Dog or implying that my shorts are ‘rather colourful’ on the understatement spectrum. I bet his real name is Cody Hogan or Chad DeAngelo and that he has an uncle named Samuel, he could not have sounded less Scottish or more American. Thankfully Mr Hogan won me over with his impressive showmanship as he played the bagpipes whilst riding a 7ft unicycle, a sentence which until today ranked close to ‘Yes I’d love some more sushi’, ‘I’d definitely recommend the Carnegie Deli for its 5 star service’ and ‘Yes I do know your 2^nd cousin Angus from Edinberg because all Scottish people know each other’ in terms of things I was likely to say.

And that was the 3^rd week of my internship, done in 4 shakes of a horse's hoof. I’ve promised myself to avoid clichés about how quickly time is passing…